It Keeps Moving
by Rantus Vil
Summary: Sand, Stone, Shadow, Home. What moves, and what keeps moving?


It's a large ranch, or rather, it was. Before the War. They probably grew corn, but who knows. Only mutfruit grows now. The Sand, Soil, or whatever is left of both is too light to carry a good crop; the wind always blows it away.

The Sand keeps moving.

It keeps moving.

Child, Boy, sits on wooden porch. The porch, it's brown, dark brown, only a shadow of what it was years ago.

Probably red.

Or maybe blue.

Boy steps down creaky stairs, barely holding together. Kicks his feet through the Sand; it fills his shoes. His shoes have no soles; Sand falls out. His clothes are like his shoes: ragged, beaten and obviously worn. Wears gloves coated in dirt, fingers are showing. His fingers, along with his skin, are crusted in dirt and other particles.

Shame. Only eight years on him and his childhood is over.

Boy flexes his fingers, crunching sounds fill his ears. Boy stops, looks around. Daytime, he sees. Grey hills and far off mountains both littered with black trees. Boy turns to the ranch Home and looks.

Observes.

Windows are broken on both floors. Porch sits, or hangs, attached to rotting, brown wood that makes up Home. Roof is nonexistent, but the floor on the second level covers the ground level, where Boy lives.

Boy looks up to top floor. What's left of the wall gives the ranch home a haunted feeling, but that doesn't stop Girl from going up.

Sister, Boy thinks. Can't remember.

Girl is sitting behind broken window, can't be seen by those who don't look. Same clothes as boy, but she is older. 18? 19? 25? Doesn't matter. She is good.

_Protects me_, he thinks. _She's not one of the bad guys._

Girl's red hair is tied back in a ponytail, though she doesn't know what a pony is. Skin is torn and encased in dirt.

Doesn't care.

Girl's holding a rifle, taped on the sides, used for far too long. She defends Home, her brother, her father. Keeps eyes on road, targets don't pass her. She watches her brother, he stares back. He waves, she doesn't. No point. The process had already started.

When Girl was his age, she loved Sand. Sand was everywhere and anywhere. It moved where wind took it. It moved.

And it kept moving.

Girl wanted to leave the ranch. Father said no. Father had lost too much to leave what was left.

She thinks about him. Turns her head, looks away from road and looks on fields of mutfruit. She sees the sun, unleashing waves of sky over the Earth. Halfway to sunset, she sees. Blue at the bottom, then purple, then more blue on the horizon. The plains give sight of the sky, the wind, and the moving sand.

She sees Father, still raking; looking for any good fruit to feed his young. Sun casts on him a bright right side, the left remains in shadows. She sees a silhouette of a man, nothing but a shadow of what was.

A shadow of what will be.

He stops. Leans on the rake and wipes his brow. He worries for all. Worrying used to be a team effort. His other half, the bright side, gone. What once lit his shadow had fallen into it instead.

Should have been there. Should have been awake. Father of children, Mother of children. Took one away; they took the bright out.

Now Father relies on the Sun for light, for guidance. How does he raise the young in the world of the Wasteland?

He looks toward the sun, squinting. His five o'clock shadow is a 24 clock instead. His upper lip sports a tangled mess of short hairs. His matted hair is there for protection.

To protect what, he asks.

_My brain, of course._

Why?

_To save the memories. To save the bright. To save their Mother._

His mind slips into the sunset, and Girl does not know if it will return. She stands, body in the open, visible. She sees him and wonders if he wants to be Sand.

Like Girl does.

Has Father realized Sand is better than Stone? Stone stays put, Sand keeps moving.

It keeps moving.

Boy, still on front lawn, lawn of Sand. His eyes wide. Cannot hear, only ringing in ears. Falls to his knees, tries to call out, no sound. Only pain. He looks down on his chest, red.

Red.

Dirt coated shirt has been added to. Blood? New mixture. New variable. Boy is not Sand, so change is expected.

_Sand,_ he thinks, _Why couldn't I be sand?_

Girl turns from sun, back to vigil. Only heard the shot after it happened. Too late.

Girl arms herself. Girl fires at the men in the hills, they fire back.

She doesn't last. Eyesight lost after fifth or sixth shot at her. Black. Shadow. Who's did she fall into, she would never know. Mother fell into Father, but Girl? No shadow, no brain near to remember, to be protected.

Shots stopped. Men, dirty, ragged, make move toward home. Step over Boy, still awake. Ransack the home, take what they see. Don't see Father, Father hid. Where?

Who knows. Good hiding spot, though.

Men drag Boy, barely breathing, into home. Men ignite curtains and what is left of furniture. Home goes up in a blaze as Men head back the way they came.

Father stands, back in fields, in front of the sun. Father shows nothing, shows no card, shows no expression, as home and the last of the bright burns to a crisp.

Sun sets down as home sets ablaze. Father's shadow extends onto home as sun falls away from the sun. His shadow encases, embraces the fire as the darkness encases Father.

Embraces Father.

Father, now only a true shadow in the dark, watches as home falls into his night. His world of Stone, of young, and of memories, fell with Mother.

Into shadow.

His shadow.

He falls into Sand and wakes up a moment later. The new moment is day, and the shadows are gone. Father walks, sifts through the embers of his Stone. Father finds a knife, his brother's old knife.

He cuts his hair off.

His head shaved, he lets the memories seep out of a now unprotected skull. He is no longer Father, but he cannot go on as Man.

_What now?_

_Who am I now?_

He winces at a fast breeze. He steps out of the rubble and sees beauty. Wind picks up Sand and let it dance. A spiral of pure magnificence, pure simplicity. Sand flew to the west, or maybe east.

Man, not Father, found his new place. Man followed the gust of sand, and joined.

The process was over. The process was complete.

From Sand to Man.

From Man to Father.

From Father to Man.

From Man to Sand.

And like Sand, he moved. And he kept moving.

He kept moving.


End file.
